Pros

Cons

No centralized management.

Backup software with no service component.

Additional server options are pricey.

Bottom Line

CloudBerry Backup Ultimate is a fantastic piece of backup software that supports a well-rounded cross section of scenarios found in a small business environment.
But, despite the configurability and choice of cloud storage provider, it scales poorly without a means to centrally manage and monitor backups across the organization.

March 30, 2019

CloudBerry Backup Ultimate varies from the competition a bit, starting with its per-seat rather than subscription pricing structure ($299.99 per seat at its lowest tier). In this CloudBerry is less of a business-oriented cloud backup service and more of a traditional backup application. In the strictest sense, you can call it a Bring-Your-Own-Storage (BYOS) solution. What makes this solution attractive is CloudBerry Backup Ultimate's rich feature set. With the right combination of licenses, it's hard to find a storage endpoint that isn't supported. It works across Linux, Mac, and Windows platforms, and also covers a wide range of the most popular cloud storage providers, including Amazon Glacier, Amazon S3, Google Storage, IBM/SoftLayer, Microsoft Azure, OpenStack, Rackspace, and others. What this means is that CloudBerry's solution lets IT administrators build a single backup process that can cover an organization's entire data landscape, whether local or in the cloud. While that's certainly useful, it's not unique and CloudBerry Backup Ultimate's lack of centralized management and DIY-style keep it a bit behind our Editors' Choice winner Zetta Data Protection in this category.

Signing up for CloudBerry Backup Ultimate immediately brings up a screen that lets you select your cloud-based storage buckets by name. Of these, Amazon S3 is, by far, the most popular target these days, though by no means the cheapest. If Amazon's not your cup of tea, then CloudBerry has a wide range of alternate services so it's possible to configure whatever architecture you need. Additionally, by letting you target so long a list of storage providers, CloudBerry reduces your risk of vendor lock-in should you opt to use a different solution in the future.

Installation and Setup

Installing CloudBerry Backup Ultimate is as simple as double-clicking the installer and following the default options. When the product is launched, the first thing you'll need to do is create a backup plan. A prerequisite to this is to add a cloud storage provider. As stated earlier, the list of service providers is long, so non-technical folks might feel a little overwhelmed. But the most popular ones are neatly filtered to the top of the list and, if you have IT skills on your staff, those people can easily handle this process.

For Amazon S3 and a few of the other options, a cost estimate option is provided in the account setup that will display the current expected cost in your dashboard. CloudBerry Backup Ultimate does a fantastic job of ensuring there are no surprises from a cost perspective, even across the actual cloud data storage being provided by third parties. There are two modes in which a direct-to-cloud backup architecture can operate. Regular mode will make one upload request per file, which can incur additional cost in many of the cloud storage options. However, Archive mode seeks to minimize this cost impact by combining all files to be backed up before archival into a single upload.

After selecting the backup mode, you can select which folders to back up and apply various filters to restrict the backup set. Client-side encryption and compression is also selected at this stage. CloudBerry Backup Ultimate provides AES 25-bit encryption as its strongest option here, which is fine considering it's the industry standard for military-grade encryption.

Backups are scheduled to run on a specific date, recurring schedule, or real-time. Following this, a number of optional pre- and post-execution scripts can be run and email notifications may be configured as a follow-on step. Optionally, an entry in the Windows Event Log can be created to create entries for successful or failed backup jobs. After the backup job is completed, everything works on this schedule.

Backup Features

CloudBerry Backup Ultimate offers a number of backup modes in addition to the standard file-based backup. The image-based backup feature creates a full operating system (OS) or system state backup that can be applied by using a special bootable USB created from within CloudBerry Backup Ultimate. That means you're creating a single file that not only restores an instance of a critical app, but also the underlying server OS, like Linux or Windows Server. If you're running virtual servers in a cloud, like Amazon Web Services (AWS), then CloudBerry Backup Ultimate can literally snapshot the entire virtual machine (VM) so it can be restored just like a file. This is exactly the kind of option you want to see for those "break glass in case of emergency" moments where you need to get a system restored exactly as it was right before whatever catastrophe took it down. Microsoft Windows Server Active Directory Services are a good example of when this is a preferred option since there is no easy and straightforward method of archiving an AD configuration as a standard file backup.

The Microsoft Exchange email and messaging server is also directly supported by Cloudberry Backup Ultimate. Unfortunately, unless you're using a hybrid configuration, Microsoft Office 365 is not supported since you need to have access to Exchange's underlying database files for it to properly work. Still, for those organizations that have Exchange running locally or have a hybrid configuration, this is a great way to ensure that Exchange can get backed up.

Databases such as Microsoft SQL Server or SAP HANA are also special cases. Because data in these kinds of databases can change so quickly, it's easy to get a corrupted backup when using standard methods as data, and even associated table and row information may change between backup and restore operations. While many products require an archive to be created prior to use, CloudBerry Backup Ultimate takes care of this automatically in the background. This is a huge time saver for admins who don't want to manage an additional maintenance plan that will have a tendency to fail with minor changes anyway.

However, all of these positive points about CloudBerry Backup Ultimate aside, it's still an app that must be individually configured for each machine it's backing up. There is no central management console to make this easier, which can be a big negative to organizations with lots of targets. Also, it's not accessible via the web, which makes backup monitoring difficult and forces the need to have pre-arranged remote access to any system that needs restoration. While that may not be a deal breaker for small businesses with very few machines, this model tends to scale poorly as new employees are hired and new desktops, laptops, and servers are deployed to support them. You'll need to weigh CloudBerry Backup Ultimate's upside carefully against your organization's expected growth and IT sprawl, and then decide whether or not to purchase.

Security

Overall, CloudBerry Backup Ultimate does fine when looked at through a security lens. One of its primary benefits here is that all encryption occurs on the client machine. This gives your organization complete control and peace of mind. That being said, it does shift the burden of key management solely to your organization. A lost key can mean losing data forever, so it's important to get that right, which means skilled IT personnel become a requirement. CloudBerry Backup Ultimate does provide the option of exporting each machine's configuration to a file; however, retaining passwords in this file is optional and, depending on your organization's security policy, may not be advisable.

If legal compliance issues are part of your security worries, then remember that, because CloudBerry Backup Ultimate doesn't act as a service provider, it shifts those concerns either to you, the customer, or to the third-party cloud storage services you're using to actually store your data. Big names, such as Amazon AWS' S3, Microsoft Azure, or the Rackspace Managed Cloud, can fulfill the technical requirements for HIPAA compliance and will sign a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) to that effect. They're also typically complaint with ISO 27001 as well as SOC1 and SOC2 requirements. However, smaller players may or may not be able to handle such requirements, and in CloudBerry Backup Ultimate's model, it's up to you to find that out and plan accordingly.

While it's billed as a cloud service, CloudBerry Backup Ultimate is really a traditional backup program, though it's a great example of how simple and effective such a solution can be, even when paired with cloud-based storage services. While the lack of centralized management will turn some away, there is a lot of power and control over how and where your data is stored. When you only have a few machines to manage, CloudBerry Backup Ultimate can be a great option to cover your bases. However, if scaling is important to you, then it's probably best to explore full-service competitors such as Zetta Data Protection.

CloudBerry Backup Ultimate

Bottom Line: CloudBerry Backup Ultimate does a great job of managing business backups, though you'll need more central management muscle to get its full benefits than you might with competing products.